If there were words…

I have sat down to write every single night this week. And now that statement no longer even makes sense…because now it is Monday and the beginning of a new week. 

Here’s why: How do you express both elation and heartbreak in the same breath? It doesn’t make sense does it? I’ve tried to write but the words don’t make sense. Celebration and mourning? Happiness and sadness?

This past week my family found out that one of my cousins who is only 18 years-old has brain cancer. Eighteen. Brain tumors. Cancerous. Healthy turned terminally-ill in one breath. Impossible? …it should be shouldn’t it?

But it’s not. It is now a reality. For my cousin, his family, and our entire family. 

This semester I’ve sat in class listening to the hypotheses, the theories on theodicy. How God can be all knowing, completely and totally good, with complete control and power…and the world be the way it is? I’ve listened all semester long to the conversations, the debate, the discussion about how and why these things can happen. I’ve been very interested and have also been given a headache (every single class). It’s been quite intriguing. 

But now…

Now. It is not a foreign concept. It is not just theory to be wrestled with. We visited my cousin and his family. Holding it together while with them was do-able. But as soon as the car doors shut behind us the tears flowed freely. And the question we’ve been wrestling with all semester burst from my lips: 

“Why!!?”

Why. How. How can this be possible? Why would it happen to him? 

Outrage. Fear. Pain.

The problem about having such an incredible God who is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all good…is He’s too big to figure out entirely.  There is a mystery to God. And while he has made himself knowable and relate-able…we still don’t get all the answers.

So this week we sit with the whys and the hows and wait. For an answer. A miracle. For the comfort and peace to survive.